This photo from the Allen County Historical Society shows the Lima City Hospital, which opened in 1899 and was replaced by Memorial Hospital in 1933. The building stood for nearly 70 more years before it was demolished in 2002 to make room for the new Lima Senior High School.
Courtesy of Allen County Historical Society
Cora May Davies worked at Lima City Hospital when both it and she were young. She was still there after more than three decades, the longest serving staff member, as the antiquated facility was succeeded by a shiny, new hospital on Memorial Day in 1933.
Davies, who was one of the first nurses to complete training at the City Hospital nursing school, had a simple request as the move was made to the new Memorial Hospital. “Miss Davies,” the Lima News wrote May 29, 1933, “has expressed a wish to have the honor of making up the first bed in the new hospital. The wish will be gratified.”
The hospital to which Davies devoted most of her life marked its 125th anniversary this year. It filled a glaring need when it opened in 1899.
When Davies graduated from Lima High School in 1897, Lima was approaching 21,000 in population with railroads, factories, hotels, a business college and even an opera house — but no hospital. “While Lima was a prosperous and growing city,” William Rusler wrote in his 1921 history of Allen County, “it was tardy in turning its attention to hospital needs.”
The cost of that tardiness was never more apparent than in mid-December 1891 when the westbound Keystone Express passenger train derailed just outside Lima, killing three and leaving at least a dozen more injured. “The serious railroad accident that occurred the other day on the eastern edge of the city was another conclusive and emphatic reminder of a necessity for a hospital in Lima,” the Allen County Democrat wrote on Christmas Day 1891.
While the Democrat praised all those who helped the injured, including the staff of the Hotel French, which was turned into an impromptu hospital, the newspaper noted, “when all was done those who most needed help could not feel the same confidence as they would had they been taken to an institution regularly provided for the care of such cases.” Some of the injured, the Democrat added, opted to go to Fort Wayne for treatment.
“It was not until 1894 that there was a concerted effort toward a public hospital,” Rusler wrote.
“In 1897,” the News wrote in March 1999 as the hospital celebrated its 100th anniversary, “a community meeting resulted in the formation of the Lima Hospital Society whose express purpose was to raise money and build a hospital to service the Lima area.”
“A benefit play was given, and meetings were held at various times,” the News wrote in 1933. “Nothing definite, however, was accomplished until 1898, when the Overmeyer property (which was on the north side of the 700 block of East Market Street), the present site of City hospital was bought.” The hospital became a reality in April 1899, “due largely to the efforts of Dr. S. (Solomon) Hiner,” who, beginning in the early 1890s, “devoted practically all his time” to seeing that Lima got a hospital, the newspaper noted.
On April 1, 1899, about 1,000 people toured the new hospital, which had a nursing staff of one along with three other employees. “Only six consulting physicians and eight visiting physicians attended the sick,” the News wrote in 1999. “There was one operating room and no emergency or delivery rooms.”
“Lima’s city hospital on East Market Street has been thrown open to the public and for the first time in the history of Lima, the city has a place in which to care for the unfortunate ones,” the News reported April 3, 1899. “A formal opening of the institution was held yesterday afternoon.”
Several days later, the Allen County Republican-Gazette published the rules for the new hospital, including that “rooms, board and ordinary nursing will be furnished for pay-patients, whether residents of Lima or not, in the general wards of the hospital and private rooms at from $7 to $15 per week, payable in advance …”
The 13 rooms were soon filled. On April 10, 1899, the News proclaimed, “There no longer remains a doubt but that Lima was sorely in need of a city hospital, for notwithstanding that the institution has only been open several days, a number of patients have been admitted for treatment.” Among them, the newspaper added was a well-known blind piano tuner, who had both eyes removed after “he was thrown on his face while in the act of getting into a buggy.”
Between 1902 and 1913, several additions were made to the original building. In 1902, the nurses’ training school was added and Davies was among its first four graduates in 1904.
By 1921, renovations and additions had increased the patient capacity to 90, but it was not enough to serve Lima’s growing population, which by 1920 had grown to more than 41,000, double what it had been when the hospital opened in 1899. In May 1923, the City Hospital’s leaders called for a $600,000 bond issue to fund a replacement.
“To the informed, it is notorious that the present plant is antiquated. For a score of years, it has served well. Of late years the service that has been wrung from it has been under the greatest of handicaps, … Lima needs a NEW city Hospital,” the Republican-Gazette opined May 13, 1923.
Lima would get a new hospital, but it would take a decade as financial difficulties in the city delayed the project. It wasn’t until 1928 that hospital officials began to move forward with the hospital. In 1930, land was purchased at the old fairgrounds for the new hospital.
“In 1931, Lima Memorial was chosen as the name of the new building,” the News wrote in 1999. “On August 22, 1932, in a special Sunday afternoon service where veterans of the Civil, Spanish-American and World War I were honored, the cornerstone was laid.”
Appropriately, the hospital named to honor veterans, opened on Memorial Day. “The opening and inspection scheduled for Tuesday marks the realization of a hope long deferred,” the News wrote May 29, 1933. “The movement for construction of the hospital and nurses’ home began more than 10 years ago, when the hospital society petitioned the city commission to take action on the project. A bond issue of $600,000 was authorized by the voters of Lima.”
The old Lima City Hospital was vacated on the same day Memorial opened. The old hospital, which became an apartment building, was razed in 2002 to make room for the new Lima Senior High School.
Lima’s new $550,000 Memorial Hospital had six floors with ornate bronze doors at the main entrance, and two elevators. “There were solarium waiting rooms, a tiled roof promenade and an ultra-modern kitchen, large enough to store a side of beef,” the News wrote in 1999.
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SOURCE
This feature is a cooperative effort between the newspaper and the Allen County Museum and Historical Society.
LEARN MORE
See past Reminisce stories at limaohio.com/tag/reminisce
Reach Greg Hoersten at [email protected].
